New Russia Revelation Highlights the Big Lie at the Center of Trump’s Campaign

Rick Dearborn, Deputy Chief of Staff, listens as President Donald Trump speaks during a healthcare discussion with key House Committee Chairmen.

By The Washington Post/Getty Images.

In the last several months of his campaign, Donald Trump and his aides repeatedly denied that anyone in his orbit had any contact with anyone connected to the Russian government. “That’s absurd,” then-campaign chairman Paul Manafortsaid when asked about any ties. Donald Trump Jr. said that the idea that Russia may have helped his father is “disgusting” and “phony.” Both men, of course, had met with a Russian lawyer and a former Soviet intelligence officer just weeks earlier, alongside Jared Kushner, after being promised damaging information about Hillary Clinton as part of an explicit Russian government effort to aid their campaign. Still, the charade continued for months, even as Trump’s talking points drifted from claims that there was no “contact” to simply no “collusion.”

That lie, which was central to the Trump campaign’s messaging on Russia throughout 2016, was thrown into harsh relief again Wednesday when CNN reported on yet another potential point of contact between a member of Trump’s team and the Kremlin. Last summer, Rick Dearborn, who served as a top policy aide during the campaign and is now the president’s deputy chief of staff, sent an e-mail informing Trump campaign officials about an individual who sought to arrange a meeting between the presidential hopeful and Vladimir Putin. Discovered by congressional investigators, the e-mail may provide further evidence of the Kremlin’s effort to interfere in the presidential election, and of Trump’s associates’ efforts to conceal those efforts.

Dearborn sent the e-mail in June of last year, around the time of Donald Jr.’s rendezvous with the Russian lawyer. According to sources that spoke with CNN, the person seeking the meeting was only identified as being from “WV”—believed to be a reference to West Virginia. It is unclear why they sought the meeting and whether Dearborn or other Trump campaign officials acted upon the request.

Unlike others in Trump’s orbit, Dearborn has managed to avoid the spotlight surrounding the parallel congressional and Justice Department investigations into whether the Trump campaign colluded with the Russia. Lawmakers and special counsel Robert Mueller will likely have questions for Dearborn following the discovery of the e-mail, which was reportedly among the 20,000 documents the Trump campaign turned over to multiple congressional committees earlier this year. Dearborn also served as Jeff Sessions’s chief of staff when the then-Alabama senator had two meetings with the then-Russian Ambassador to the United States Sergey Kislyak, which have been of interest to investigators. (Dearborn did not respond to CNN’s request for comment. White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders told the outlet, “We aren’t going to comment on potentially leaked documents.”)

While there is no evidence of wrongdoing by Dearborn, the e-mail does fit a broader pattern of Trump staffers and associates being involved in Russia’s attempts to establish lines of communication. Trump campaign aide George Papadopoulos reportedly made numerous attempts to arrange meetings between senior Trump campaign staffers and Russian officials. Adviser Carter Page was allegedly in repeated contact with Russian intelligence agents who attempted to recruit him. Kushner has confirmed he sought to establish a private, secure line of communication with the Kremlin using Russian diplomatic facilities. And, as Dearborn’s e-mail suggests, a sizable portion of Trump campaign officials must have been aware of the ongoing, multifaceted effort to connect the Republican nominee and Putin. “The Russians are really experts at this,” Steve Hall, a retired C.I.A. chief of Russia operations, told CNN.